Staining and Stripping Your Deck

Get tips on how to stain or strip paint from your deck. For green paint stripping materians, visit greenbuildingsupply.com.

LESLIE: We’re going to take a call from Dallas in Connecticut who’s having an issue with a deck[1]. What can we do for you?

DALLAS: Yeah, well I have a problem with a deck. Unfortunately, I stained it about – roughly about a year ago. It seems that the rails held up pretty good but most of the deck portion, a lot of it just either faded out or came off. And my concern is I would like to maybe do something over it. Do you have something that’s not so labor-intensive [like sanding] (ph)? And if I wanted to put a paint surface instead of staining again, what would I have to do?

TOM: You know, it is a lot of work – especially when you have a finish that goes on, Dallas, and then comes right off again – because you can’t put anything on top of a bad finish. If you do, it’s going to continue to peel off. So, if you want something that’s going to work and you’ve got a bad product on there now, you’re going to have to strip it off. There’s just no way around that because you can’t put good paint on bad paint and you can’t put good stain on bad stain. You have an adhesion issue that has to be addressed first before you can put the next layer on.

DALLAS: Any particular type of stripper that you might recommend; you know, that’s going to be safe to use?

LESLIE: Well, there are a whole host of different products. Every manufacturer makes one. If you’re looking for something that’s terrifically green, there is a website that you can go to; it’s called GreenBuildingSupply.com[2] and they have a bunch of green strippers that are sort of more natural in their materials that they use for the product. But you just want to make sure that you get rid of anything that’s peeling up.

If you go with a solid stain – you know, one that looks more like paint but it still sort of saturates the surface as a stain does – look for one that’s sort of a mixture of an oil and a latex product, so it’s like a primer and a topcoat all in one, because that’ll really help with the adhesion. But you’re going to notice you always get the most wear and tear, obviously, on the horizontal surfaces and the vertical surfaces are going to keep the stain much longer. So make sure you follow the directions and you will get what the manufacturer promises as far as duration.

DALLAS: Oh, OK. Thank you so much and have a pleasant day.

LESLIE: You, too.

TOM: You’re welcome, Dallas. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.